


Olive

by Melthalion (kemelios)



Category: Bible (New Testament)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-01
Updated: 2011-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-16 00:56:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kemelios/pseuds/Melthalion





	Olive

**_Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am._** –Psalms 39:4.

We’ve been living on the outskirts of the desert outside of Judaea for nine long years, the Master and I. He sits now at the altar He made for himself out of the olive wood some pilgrims brought us years ago. He might be praying; He is always praying, but to me it is as if He is looking toward Heaven, lost in some lonely conversation with His Father again. He kneels on rocks that cut flesh. After dusk He will come in to our home and I will bandage His knees once more, perhaps add some extra padding so that tomorrow’s vigil against the sky will not be so painful for Him. Although He seems to accept pain as His due and smiles at me when I attempt to shelter Him from it, I cannot help but try to keep Him whole.

We told everyone, the world, really, now, that He arose to Heaven to be with His Father after they murdered Him. I had never seen so much blood before. My Lord bled from the cross from His gentle hands and His patient feet and His side where they gutted Him. The crimson flow wept down His still, golden body, a body I had loved for all my days. Mary held fast to my hand as if to let go would mean that she really had lost a son. Head thrown back, eyes shut, mouth open, He was in death so much the way I had known him in life. I saw Joseph, a good man from Arimathaea, catch a few precious droplets of blood in his cup and raise it to his mouth.

I knew then that I would never taste my Master again. How wrong I was.

I saw Him die, felt the rain soak me to the skin, heard the thunder and took shelter from the lightning in a drinking house a way from Golgotha, dragging His tearful mother along behind me. Our mother, I suppose I should say now. As I sat drinking in that place, my fellow disciples came in to meet me until a crowd of us gathered there.

“The Master is dead,” I heard myself say, though I could hardly stand myself for admitting it. I looked over at Mary, her veil hid her face from sight. “They have murdered Jesus.” Their heads bowed at this, although they had heard as much. News travels quickly here in the city.

Simon Peter’s face was a heap of ash. It was as if the dust and death and stench of all that was and is rotten in the world had crept up and smothered him unawares. “No,” he shook his head and I saw condemnation in his eyes, condemnation outweighing his usual determination. A first.

I raised my head to him, fresh tears there, and took a great gulp of red wine from my cup. The Master’s blood. Drink this in remembrance of Me. Oh God.

Grit and love and hate and hope and everything that makes up my face must have assured him that I spoke the truth then, for he turned away from me, his head in his hands. I heard him groan and the others began to weep.

I looked at them. They were as lambs without a shepherd. Oh, Master. I hung my head.

* * *

Three days later He returned to me, scars on His hands and on His feet, wound, mostly healed, under His ribs.

“Beloved,” He said, a glint of gold in His eyes, His full mouth pulled into the ghost of a smile. He pressed His lips against mine.

I shook. “Master,” I whispered against the softness of His neck. I allowed myself a brief moment to lean against the chest of the man I believed to be lost forever, to smell His scent and taste the saltiness of His human skin.

“I am with you now but a short while, soon I will leave this place and return to My Father.”

“Kiss me again, Lord.”

It never came to pass. On good days He tells me that His Father wants Him to stay on earth, live a life, know the pain and the joy of being truly human. Know a human death. On bad days He screams to the Heavens that He will live, He will die and He will know human pleasure. “Enough of pain,” He yells, “You have given Me what You could never give Job.” Those are His bad days, but I revel in them. For during the downpour that always results from His fights with His Father, He storms wet into our cave with flashing eyes and garments rent asunder, falling on me with an otherworldly passion. His mouth pulls yelps from my nipples, juice from my cock, my hairs stand on end.

“How do you like this?” He cries, licking the remains of my orgasm from His lips, His voice an agony of sound, but I am too far gone to care. “I will take pleasure from this one, Father, if You will leave Me here! I will know love. I will know all the beauty of this plane.”

His eyes are like tree sap. “Do not condemn Your Son for love, Father.”

Do not. Do not. I know that tomorrow He will be on His knees again, but this time on the cruel stones in front of his intricate altar of olive wood.


End file.
